The Old Dominion

To the young Virginia Republicans of the year 1800, Jeffersonianism seemed to be a comprehensive social philosophy peculiarly adapted to their needs. It offered a practical and humane program of national development in harmony with existing fact and native genius. His fame has been obscured with the cause for which he labored, and his reputation lies buried with the old agrarian regime . Nevertheless John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia, "the philosopher and statesman of agrarianism", was the most penetrating critic of Hamiltonian finance and the most original economist of his generation. America must make choice between agrarianism and capitalism; the two were incompatible, John Taylor was convinced, and unless the ambitions of the paper-money aristocracy were held in check, the American producer would come under the heel of middle-class exploitation. Like Jefferson&s;s, the agrarianism of Taylor was founded in the Physioc.